I can’t write about my father without writing about my mother. Both terrible people. That man hanging himself? Jake Fratelli of the Goonies, pretending to hang himself to escape jail.
One afternoon my friends and I rode out bikes over to the $0.75 cent theater. I had a best friend, Manny, who just looked out for me. He knew when I was having a bad day with my mother, and would kind of take me to do things to take my mind off it. Now as a kid, I thought this would be a funny practical joke, and I copied it the same day I saw it. Not as elaborately as Jake, but I still did the best I could. All of this however, needs to be preceded with an even deeper story, that of my parents deep seeded hatred and resentment for each other.
I don’t think my parents were ever really meant to be parents. Both of them ego driven, the inescapable truth is they always cared too much about themselves to actually care about their children. For my father, my brother and I were a crutch for his failures, holding up what little dignity he has. For my mother, we represented a vector to get back at him for perceived grievances he caused her.
It’s not to say neither doesn’t have legitimate claims or beefs about each other, but one uses neglect and violence, while the other uses manipulation of social welfare systems to play the victim in order to attack the other. I can’t really say with any degree of certainty that either was particularly honest with me about their relationship with each other, but certainly somewhere between embellishment and reproach lies a mediocre truth.
I think they were both on drugs.
I think they both fucked around.
I think my mother would goat him.
I think my father would hit her.
I think neither had t he emotional capacity to forgive each other for the childrens sake.
That last one was maybe the worst. Not because they needed to forgive each other, but their kids carry traits of both parents, and by proxy the lack of forgiveness also meant that anytime these traits reminded them of the other parent, these feelings of vengeance surfaced. Thus we became proxies for them to abuse each other.
Back to the Goonies though.
The day after I did my practical joke, my mother, stepfather, and some woman I had never met before “wanted to talk” to me. She was some kind of a counselor. My father was supposed to pick me up, but he was late that day, or flaking. I had nothing to say, so I made my way to the door when my stepfather grabbed me.
I fought back as best as an 11 year old could. I bit, I kicked, punched, they threw me on the couch, and all 3 sat on me. I screamed. At one point they tried to stuff a rag in my mouth.
What seemed like forever, the police came, and took me for a 72 hour evaluation. After that I was sent to a place called Monte Villa in Morgan Hill, a private psychiatric hospital. Under the care of a psychiatrist named Dean Freedlander, who would later be accused of having inappropriate relations with a 15 year old patient, but it would later be reduced to misdemeanor child endangerment.
I’m not going to go into all the horrible things that happened to me there, but I will say that I was abused. Outright abused in every conceivable way there. Not only was I abused, but coerced into taking psychotropic drugs, or forced at times.
It was so strange to have these folks ask me, “Why did you want to kill yourself?” only to reply, “I saw it in The Goonies, it was just a fake practical joke” to have them respond, “What’s a Goonie?” As if I had made the whole movie up, as if The Goonies and the scene I saw never existed.
I’d realize later, these people probably knew The Goonies, but this was a manipulation technique highlighted by the Star Trek TNG episode Chain Of Command.
In this episode a Cardassian interregator named Gul Madred would try to break Picard by telling him there was 5 lights instead of 4. A technique called Compliance Conditioning, or in laymans terms gaslighting. By telling me that The Goonies was not real, if I would agree, then my real reprogramming could begin. Instead I fought the entire way. 4 lights motherfuckers.
For the first 3 months, they relied on my mother and stepfathers insurance, and for 3 months after that they got a court order to force my father’s insurance to pay.
6 months later when the money ran out, I was miraculously cured.
The worse part though wasn’t that I was there, the worse part was I would carry the stigma of being there my entire life by my family. Even during the recent fight to keep my grandmother in her home, my cousin Michael blurted to the court “HE HAS A HISTORY OF MENTAL ILLNESS!” Oh Mike, you have a history of obesity, poor dietary choices and a divorce, not to mention supporting that sham railroading of grandma.
I didn’t even react, I might have given him a glance.
The point is 40+ years later the stigma is still there. When I’m around this part of the family, it’s still there. When I’m around people that don’t know me, it’s not. At some point, I realized getting away from all of them was the best way forward.
In 2017 I began the process of truly vindicating my own feelings. Mind you, I had seen the movie plenty of times, but after all I had been through that wasn’t enough. It was time to visit Astoria, and get some cathartic healing.
At that time Sandy Preston, former owner of the Goonies house had been harassed by bad fans. My cousin who installed floors for her told me she had told him one night she her glass breaking, her door being smashed at 3am, and upon investigating found a Korean family in the kitchen. People would drive up the driveway, blocking it, throw trash, or relive themselves. That first year up there I kept my distance.
Astoria drew me in. I finally KNEW that this was all real. Yes, it’s a movie, but this reinforced the movie was real. In 2020 we would go again during the height of the pandemic in an RV. RV’s are fun to a point, I had 2 tweenish kids that fought constantly. Love em, but between that and being the guy that had to plug in the RV and setup the sewer cleanout, it was tiring doing the setup and teardown arriving, and leaving at every campsite. The RV itself was $1200 in gas round trip. Still though, we got to see some neat places, and I finally got to stand next to the house.
I can’t really describe the feeling of elation I had standing there. Knowing that this film had really been filmed here. That those months of “THERE ARE FIVE LIGHTS” Gaslighting was complete and utter bullshit.
This was also the year we met a local artist and Goonies fan and now friend, Judith Niland. If you ever visit the house, go see her, and buy some of her stuff. We love her art.
We also visited the jail. Sadly the pictures of inside the jail are lost to time. They have a spot where you can recreate Jakes hanging scene. I did it, my wife took a photo but later removed it. That’s OK.
Not only were the sites real, but there was a plaque.
In 2025 we’d return again, this time doing and seeing more. We got a VBRO and stayed longer.
Goondocks and 2 pics from the 80’s themed prom.
One of the best photos I’ve ever seen anyone take, my wife’s photo of the triple rocks from Ecola State Park.
Finally, again in 2025 we flew back to Portland for the Rose City Comic con to get my Goonies Laserdisc signed by most of the cast.
Just an absolute whirlwind experience. We did more than the comic con, we went all around Portland to the Zoo, Rose Garden, Japanese Garden, visited various districts.
The most important thing though I learned through all of this is there is people in this world that are Goonies. Goonies are the rejected, that learned to band together and support each other. Even before I saw the movie, this was how my friend group came to be.
41 years later and counting. I have a career that I’ve always enjoyed. I work from home. I only keep these people in my mind, but as I age they slowly go too. My wife works from home too. I was going to write that none of these people ever had the confidence I’d get here, but that isn’t right. They always had the confidence they would keep me from here.
That’s dangerous. Along with the stigma of it all.
One of the things I would find out during this cathartic journey is that Joe Panoliano actually made a documentary about the stigma of mental health called “No Kidding ME 2!!”
Joe played Francis Fratelli, the hair challenged brother of Jake. It just blew my mind that he understood what I was going through. Also, Joe, if you ever happen across this, I was supposed to get your autograph at Rose city, but I know you had other engagements. I wrote to you at your site for the doc, but nobody ever got back to me. I’m easy to find through The Goonies grapevine, and would be so honored to put your signature on that laserdisc with the others.
I’ve always lived with the regret of not being able to realize my full potential because of the near constant abuse I had from the time I was born until my grandmother started taking me in at 13. She didn’t fully take me in at that time, I’d go back with my parents and this type of shit would start up again. I promised I would not do to my kids what they had done to me. I would let them realize all of their potential. This is my sons recent SAT score. Him and his sister are going to have phenomenal lives without all this bullshit running around in their head.
To my mom Susan Szewczyk and and former psychiatrist Dr. Dean Freedlander, you’re no less monsters than my father was. Mom, you used this as an opportunity to keep my father from seeing me, and Dean you played along for profit. Neither of you are sorry, or there would have been some sort of actual apology and effort to “Right the ship” so to speak. I put your names here in the hope that anyone searching, will find it, and read my story.
To the person that happened upon this post… I’m OK. I still get angry about what happened from time to time, but the further I get away, the less stigma there is. The more success I have in life, the better I feel. The more I take care of my family, the greater my resolve in knowing that it was my parents choice to be like this.
I never gave up, and Goonies never say die!!!